


Hydra in SHIELD

by FemSanzo291



Series: Keeping Secrets [21]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Dubious Science, Episode Related, Episode: s01e16 End of the Beginning, Episode: s01e17 Turn Turn Turn, Hydra (Marvel), SHIELD 616 | The Bus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23551819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FemSanzo291/pseuds/FemSanzo291
Summary: Alea Carter knew something was brewing under the surface. She had assumed that the Clairvoyant was a SHIELD agent- little did she realize that Coulson's team had a traitor in their mist. Also, why did Hydra have to pick this time to rise out of SHIELD? It could have been next year and she wouldn't have minded as much, really she wouldn't have. Well, at least she can deal with the Winter Soldier.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Series: Keeping Secrets [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1354684
Kudos: 5





	1. January 4-11, 2014: End of the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Anything in between asterisks comes from the Agents of SHIELD episode End of the Beginning.

Alea was sitting in her lab with Clint standing across from her as she worked on the newest version of his comm. “I can’t believe you still haven’t told the Avengers that you can’t hear for shit,” Alea said as she closed up one of the aids. 

“Yeah, well you still haven’t told anyone your last name. So how about this, I tell the Avengers that I can barely hear without the aids when you tell someone other than my family your last name. Deal?” Clint holds out his hand.

Alea takes the outstretched hand. They shake on it and Alea lets go when the secure line in the corner rings. She stands and walks over to it. She picks it up as her lab automatically goes into lockdown mode. Alea waits for May to speak.

***"Update Log 93. He knows. I repeat Coulson knows”*** May didn’t sound any different from normal.

“So, he did see it. Alright, I’m going to be on standby. Do you know what he’s planning on doing next?” Clint came to stand by Alea as she spoke.

**“No, but if I had to guess it would be the Clairvoyant. He’s responsible for what happened to Skye.”**

“I’ll watch for that news. I’ll try to get on that team. Clint might be coming with though.” Alea says as Clint sings, “What’s wrong?”

May doesn’t say anything she just hangs up. Alea knew that after she had gone to see her that day before the team left the Triskelion that she’d been called to Fury’s office. Fury must have told her about the alien part of TAHITI because that was the biggest thing that she wouldn’t address in the unsecured part of a SHIELD office. She also knew that Edwin was recording the conversations that they had for Fury to listen to. 

“Coulson knows about where the drugs that brought him back to life come from. I’m hoping that the mental wall that he has just doesn’t give way.” Alea says and puts the phone back.

“Alright, do you think I’ll be allowed to go on the next mission?” Clint asks.

“For the Clairvoyant? Possibly. If they want only level eight and above that will be a no though. Also if it’s Hand that picks the teams it’s going to be a slim chance that I will be allowed.” Alea sits back down at her desk and the lab returns to normal. She continues to work on Clint’s aids until she falls asleep and Clint carries her over to the couch to rest before he heads back to his bunk.

* * *

The next morning Alea gets a notification that she was to get ready for a mission that would start on the eighth. That Coulson wanted her to meet with several others on one of the carriers for pick-up. Alea got ready and made her way to the carrier. Once there she saw both Garrett and Triplett and was sure that there were others. She was just there early. Over the next few days, Blake, Hand, and Sitwell arrived. Soon after all of them arrived the Bus did. 

Alea watched as the ramp lowered and Coulson and May were standing there to greet them. Hand looked them most ticked off when Coulson said that he wouldn’t tell them why they were there until after they were at cruising altitude. Once they were, the mission didn’t surprise her, they were going after the Clairvoyant. Why she was there she still hadn’t figured out till after he mentioned the fact that Skye would be working through the member of the list. If they didn’t allow for Skye to join SHIELD they would need her.

They allowed Skye to join, but Alea was still to help her figure out who it was. She went with Skye when she went to the Cage to start going through the list. Alea knew that none of these members had shown true psychic abilities when they were evaluated, but some of them might have manifested them. Nash was one that she was worried about if it was latent because he could predict people's movements and after his accident, it could have come to the surface. 

“That’s all of them that I would suspect to have mental abilities, but if you ask me, the Clairvoyant doesn’t have any mental abilities,” Alea says as she leaves the room so Skye could set up the phones. Hand and Sitwell had already left and she was sure that Coulson wasn’t going to send in FitzSimmons, and she had already told him that she was good with being backup. She laid down in Coulson’s quarters having not gotten enough sleep for the past three weeks.

As she laid on the bed she pulled out her phone and after making sure that the door was closed unlocked it. “Ed, narrow that list down to anyone that is level four or above.”

**“Understood.”**

Alea put her phone on her chest and closed her eyes.

* * *

When Alea woke several hours later they had landed near where most of the people were and Alea got ready to go. She made her way down to the main floor to see FitzSimmons looking worried at the screen in the command bay. 

“What happened, Simmons?” Alea asked as she made her way to FitzSimmons.

“Agent Blake was injured by Deathlok. The others are fine, but Deathlok got away.” Simmons looks over at Alea as she comes to stand beside them. Alea nods as they watch Blake get loaded into a van. 

“Which person was he sent after?” Alea asks as Skye comes into the room.

“Nash, the one that you were most sure about.” Skye puts her computer down on the table.

“So, we have an injured agent, and no information on where to go, because you guys wouldn’t be standing there like you lost if we had gotten Nash.”

Simmons and Skye both nod. Alea leans back and thinks about the fact of the Clairvoyant. If it was Nash then they were screwed, but if Alea was right he wasn’t and he was a figurehead. That just leaves who he could be covering for. Alea was broken out of her thoughts by her phone letting out a single beep. Alea pulled it from her pocket to see a message from Fury. 

“I’ll be back in a little while. Fury just sent me something that I need to look at.” Alea goes back up to Coulson’s office. She sat down in the corner and opened the message. It read:  **SAS NEEDED.** Alea cursed before pulling up an app labeled EJ.

“Ed, activate Silent and Safe Protocol.”

**“Of course my dear. The files from your server at RagTag?”**

“Yes.” Alea leans back and locks her phone. She knew that the Silent and Safe Protocol would be needed eventually, but she never thought that she wouldn’t be able to watch the files replace the ones that were being pulled. She was glad that she had spent some time rerouting some of the files just days before. 

“Alea, you alright?” Coulson asked, pulling her from her thoughts.

“I’ll be fine. Fury wanted me to look at something.” Alea stood and looked over at the open door. Coulson turned and closed it.

“Is it something that you want to tell me about?” Alea shakes her head before heading out of the office. She couldn’t risk Coulson knowing about the SaS, not right now when suspicions were rising everywhere. If SHIELD was going to fall apart they were going to have to work together and she didn’t need Coulson having another thing on his mind. Alea walked down the steps to see Skye, May, and Ward talking. 

“Are we headed to the Hub?” Alea asks coming to stop next to the three.

“Yes, Simmons is going to stay behind and deal with the debrief on Deathlok.” Alea nods. It makes sense to her that Simmons would do that. She knew that Simmons was wanting to work on Skye’s blood. 

They stood there talking about what happened until they landed at the Hub. At which point Hand got on and yelled at them before taking Simmons with her as she disembarked. Alea also watched as Triplett left the Bus into the Hub as well.

“May, Skye, Alea, come run debrief,” Coulson orders. They all gather in the lab where Blake’s gun and clip were laid out on the table. Skye pulled up Nash’s data on the big screen and went over it. Alea joined Coulson in front of the gear, not listening to Skye since she knew the story. 

“May, how many rounds did Blake fire?” Alea asked, noting that neither of the clips was empty.

“Six, that I heard, why?” May leaned forward to look past Coulson at Alea.

“He switched clips. There are five missing from the normal clip and one from this one.” Alea pointed to the clip that Coulson had in his hand. She knew that it wasn’t normal rounds but she wasn’t sure what it had in it.

“This is Fitz’s tracker rounds. Skye start looking for him.” Coulson orders. 

“On it.” Skye hurries out of the lab and back into the main part of the Bus. May leaves as well saying something about getting them into the air. 

“We lucked out that he remembered that Fitz had given you all tracking rounds.” Alea steadies herself as the Bus takes off. 

“That we did.” Coulson looks over at Alea as her phone goes off with an ear-piercing ring. Alea pulls it from her pocket to see another notification. This one from Edwin though. It read:  **Fury is dead.** Her face fell and she would have ended up on her ass if it weren’t for Coulson. 

“Alea, what is it?” Coulson eases Alea to the floor.

“Fury’s dead,” Alea whispered. She looked up at Coulson, her hand gripping her phone before saying, “Ed, can you find Fury’s tracker?” 

“You have a tracker on Fury?” Coulson’s eyes went wide. Alea nodded waiting for Edwin to speak up.

**“I found it, my dear. It’s at an old abandoned SSR bunker. It’s near DC and so is Agent Hill’s”** Alea and Coulson both let out a breath. It wasn’t likely that Fury was dead if he had been moved to an old SSR facility. Especially if Hill was with him. So he was faking death, and that worried both of them because if Fury was faking his death that meant something big had to be going down.

Alea soon gathered herself enough to stand back up and make her way out of the lab. She slipped into Coulson’s head as she did so though.

_ “This doesn’t get any farther than the two of us right now.”  _

_ “Of course.” _

Alea makes her way up to where they were planning the takedown of Nash. Alea would be going with them to try and apprehend Deathlok seeing as she also had a cybernetic arm. She was also slightly enhanced. Her face was stone as they got off the Bus and into the SUVs. Alea watched as Skye looked like she was going to puke in the back of the van that Coulson was driving. To be fair at least she wasn’t Fitz, who had puked twice about halfway through the drive. Once they were at the abandoned warehouse that Deathlok was in they all bailed out with the rest of the SHIELD back up. Skye stayed in the van so that she could coordinate the team once Fitz had his drones in the air. 

She let Ward and Garrett take the lead, but the moment they were inside the building she and Coulson took the lead and found a spot for Fitz to set up the drone system. Once the drones were in the air Alea listened for Skye or Fitz to say they had picked up movements on them. 

* **“Northwest corridor is picking up something. Give me a second to pull up the live feed.”*** Even though the comms you could hear Skye typing away.  **“I’m can’t be sure it’s him. I’m activating the overlay now.”** Skye’s voice hitched and Alea went running. She knew that it was Deathlok seeing as Skye’s startled voice in her ear was saying that something had been done to him, that he was full of cybernetic parts now.

She took the corner and when she saw Deathlok raise his arm she jumped and dodged the missile. She managed to remember to activate her comm and say, “Contact.” She continued to chase after him without pause and used her stature to her advantage and jumped up onto his back and wrapped her left arm around his throat. He choked before grabbing her by her shirt and tossed him over his shoulder. 

Alea hit the wall hard but she just stood up and continued to run after him. She aimed a punch at his head as he took the stairs. He turned and caught it and tossed her into the wall again. 

**“Carter, stand down!”** Coulson yelled in her ear. 

“I can get him!” Alea yelled as she stood and jumped the railing as Deathlok had done. She glances at Coulson’s shocked face as she falls past him and pulls out the grapple line from her belt and hooks it to the railing to stop her fall about two feet from the ground. She lets go of the line before following after Deathlok. She catches up to him one last time in the stairwell down to the basement and manages to land a solid punch on his left shoulder with her left and he doesn’t react in the way she’d expected. He just turns and grabs her by her arm and tossed her into the wall once more. This time when she hit the wall she stayed where she landed. Coulson came though the hall not long after and stopped for just a second.

“Go, Phil. I'm not dying.” 

Coulson nods and continues down the stairs. Alea reaches up to her comm and says, “Skye, I’d be grateful for a medic team.”

**“They're on their way to you.”**

Alea nods even though Skye couldn’t see it and lets her head fall to the floor. Now that she’d calmed down the adrenaline was leaving her system and she could feel every point on her body that hit the wall. She was pretty sure that she could even feel the radiating pain from her legs from pushing herself so hard to keep up with Deathlok. Soon the medic team arrived and had her on a stretcher after making sure that there wasn’t more damage to her spine than she already had. They carried her out of the building and she realized that she probably had a concussion when the outdoor light hit her eyes and she growled. 

“Where do you want to be put, Agent Carter?” the lead med team member asked. He’d worked with her several times in the past and knew that Alea wasn’t one for being in an ambulance of any sort. 

“The van please.” She covers her eyes with her right arm. 

They get her laid down behind the seats that Fitz and Skye were in the van and the medic stays behind to do a once over with Alea.

“List out your pain.”

Alea doesn’t move her arm before answering, “Back, probably just bad bruising, doesn’t feel like my ribs are broken again. I can feel some radiating pain from my legs, likely just a pulled muscle. Hit my head and almost definitely have a concussion. Otherwise, I’m good, nothing that I haven’ dealt with before.”

Alea could hear Skye gasping at the list of injuries before she heard Coulson say,  **“The room needs to be swept for explosive devices.”** She decided to pull her comm out of her ear and tossed it onto the floor before shifting up onto her side facing away from the screens. She was on her way to sleep when the driver’s door opened and then was slammed shut. Alea jolted awake and moved so that she could see who got in. It took her eyes a second to adjust before she could tell that it was Coulson.

“Phil, what happened?”

“Ward shot Nash.” 

Alea couldn’t see Coulson’s face from where she was, but she was certain that it was that same expression that he always wore when she or Clint had gotten into trouble during missions, an emotionless mask that could crack and show his fear at any moment.

“Are we going to be able to take him back on the Bus for questing?” Alea knew that Garrett was the only other high-level agent that could demand that Ward goes with him.

“He is.”

Alea lays back down and Skye goes up to the Passenger seat to sit. Fitz settles in the other back seat and watches Alea settle down on the stretcher so that she would move the least. Alea had moved so that she was laying on her stomach and her left hand had a hold of part of Coulson’s seat, her right hand had a hold of part of Fitz’s seat. 

Coulson drove them back to the Bus at a much slower pace then he’d arrived. Once they get back Coulson takes Ward up to the cage and May helps Alea up to the bunks. May stops at hers and Alea tries to get away and up to Coulson’s bunk but the fact that she wasn’t at full strength meant that May had an advantage. May shoved Alea down on the bed before ordering her to pull off her shirt. 

“Lock the door then,” Alea says knowing that May wouldn’t let her up until she’d assessed the damage. May turns and flips the lock. Alea strips off her shirt, but leaves her pants on, mostly because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to coordinate her limbs enough to do so. She turned so May could see her back.

Alea heard may gasp at the state of her back before she felt a hand land on her upper back. Alea’s back was one big bruise from where she’d hit the wall so many times. May felt down both sides of her spine for broken ribs before saying, “Nothing’s broken, just bruised.”

“I figured. I’ve broken too many ribs not to know what broken ribs feel like. Anyway, are we done here?” Alea tugs her shirt back over her head. May nods and Alea leaves the small bunk and heads up to Coulson’s Bunk. She lays down on the bed and almost instantly falls asleep.

* * *

The next morning when Alea woke up there was a change of clothes for her on the side table that Coulson must have gotten from her bag. She stood on achy legs and changed into much cleaner clothes. Once she was done she headed down to see where everyone was at. She saw Skye sitting on one of the couches on the other end of the Bus and made her way over there.

“Hey, do you know where the others are?” Alea asked as she sat down on the other couch.

“Fitz is down in the lab, May’s doing something in the cockpit, and I think Coulson went to talk to Ward.” Alea nods and leans forward when her back hits the back of the couch. 

“You alright over there?” Skye asks as she looks up from her laptop.

“I got really badly bruised yesterday. It just hurts when I put pressure on it.” Alea allows herself to fall over on the couch so that she was laying on her side. She pulls out her phone to see a message from Edwin. It reads  **All files updated successfully.** Alea smiles and flips so that she was laying on her stomach instead of her side. This causes her shirt to be pushed up so that both the device that allows her to walk and the bruising are easy for Skye to see.

"What's up with the device on your lower back?" Skye closes her computer.

Alea looks over at her and pulls her shirt back down before deciding to answer, "I'm missing part of my spinal nerves. I've always been missing them. I used to take meds for it, but in the 90s I got tired of having to take them to walk so I designed that. It transfers the signals from my brain better than it does the ones to my brain causing times when I can't feel my legs at all."

Skye looked interested and so Alea explained a bit more how it worked to her. After about two hours both Coulson and May came by with May informing them that Fury was at the Triskelion. So they took off going in that direction. Not long after that Alea fell asleep there on the couch. Alea woke several hours later to yelling. She sat up and could hear that the yelling contained, “encrypted line.” She sat up and was tossed from the couch when the Bus suddenly turned around. 

Alea stood and ran to the cargo bay. “Phil! The line that May has is to me! It’s because of your stubbornness! I knew that there was still some underlying damage from Loki!” Alea hoped that would get both Coulson and Skye to stand down.


	2. January 11 & 12: Turn, Turn, Turn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stuff between asterisks comes directly from Season 1 Episode 17: Turn, Turn, Turn.

Alea watched as Coulson turned his gun on her. She stood tall and readied herself to jump the railing if he decided to shoot. “Why? Why would you have her look into me? Are you the Clairvoyant?” Coulson shouted.

“Phil, I’m not. I promise you. Why would I need to shoot someone so that I could figure out what happened to bring you back to life? I have a clearance level that allows me access to anything! Also, remember who pointed you in the direction of the Guest House!” Alea yelled back. She otherwise stood absolutely still.

Coulson’s face showed the fact that he had conflicting emotions. “What about the Bus being redirected?” Alea could tell that Coulson was calming down, but she still didn’t move.

“The Bus, like all of the other larger SHIELD planes, is remotely controllable from any SHIELD base by any agent with high enough level.” Alea walked forward and put her hand on Coulson’s gun before pushing it so it was aimed at the floor. He let go of the gun and Alea turned the safety on before tucking it into the waistband of her pants. 

“May, go see if you can’t figure out where we are headed. Skye get your computer and try to hack the console system so we can at least get comms back. Fitz, get the cabling so me and you can hook up the weapons system so that we can use it if needed.” Alea watches as the others get going on her orders. Alea tugs Coulson down the stairs and into the lab where the best area to be if they land in a hostile situation is. 

Skye comes back and easily gets into the comm system and they hear Garrett saying that he has two SHIELD UAVs on his tail.

“How close are you?” Coulson asked.

**“Almost to you. You got weapons on that thing?”**

“ _ If _ we can get hacked into them. We’ve been taken over,” Coulson explained.

**“Alright, I hope you can, cause I’m running on fumes.”**

“Fitz, hurry up with that cabling!” Alea yelled as she headed for the weapons controls. She bends down and pulls the paneling off exposing open connectors. Fitz came running with a thick coil of cabling on his shoulder. He handed one end to Alea who plugged it in before standing and having Skye come with them to avionics so that she could get plugged into the system that they were going to root it though. As they made their way back Fitz and Coulson made sure that the cable was laid flat. 

Alea shoved the door open before dropping to sit on the floor to tug the bottom server rack out to see the back. “Skye hand me your computer connector.” Skye hands down the cable and Alea plug it in before asking for the other end of the cable that Fitz had. She gets it plugged in before standing and asking Skye to pull up a new console on her computer. 

“What do I need to do?” Skye asks as nothing happens even though she’d gone through the normal lines of code to get something under her control. 

“Type this in exactly: weapons - 616 - chcam override/onboard.” Skye types as Alea speaks.

“Okay, got that, anything else?” 

“Now, type control=man.” 

“Done.” 

Alea nods and looks over at Coulson, “Controls are on manual, but I think you know how to use them.” Coulson nods before dashing back to the weapon controls.

“We should probably root the comm system though the output at control.”

Skye nodded before there were more sounds of typing. Alea leans back against the wall making sure that the connecting lights are green. If they changed they were back at where they started and that wouldn’t be good at all. 

“Hey, I’m noticing something repeating over the com line. It’s consent and in code, but I think I can decrypt it.” Skye looks down at Alea.

“Do it. If there is any chance that we can figure out who’s doing this the better.”

Fitz came back to avionics about ten minutes later and told them to get upstairs. 

“Alea, is there any way to reroute the main controls through avionics?” Skye asked as they made their way upstairs.

“No, the main flight controls - while they are being remotely controlled - only have one way to be overridden, and that is through the system at my house. While we were in avionics I looked to see if we had any outgoing systems and we didn’t, meaning I can connect with what little signal I can get with my phone, but I can’t guarantee it to work.” Alea pushes open the door between the cargo hold and the lounge to see Garrett in one piece along with May and Coulson.

"Now that we are all gathered together I have something to say," Coulson takes a deep breath and looks around the room. “I have come to the realization that the Clairvoyant wasn’t Nash.”

“What do you mean?” Garrett asked.

“He means that we’re pretty sure that it isn’t someone who can read minds, just files. Someone pretty high up, but not at the top, of SHIELD.” Alea leans back against the side of the plane.

“You have some thoughts about it, so who?” Garrett asked.

“Not sure yet. I haven’t had the time to narrow it down,” Coulson answered.

“So, where the hell are we headed? Because there are very few places that could be where they redirected the Bus from.” Alea looks at May.

“The Hub.” 

“Alright, we can work with that,” Alea mutters knowing that Coulson would want to get Simmons back.

“What do you mean? We should jump this ship before we reach there." Garrett looks at Coulson with a look of confusion.

"We can't. One of our own is in there." Coulson's voice is soft but brokered no argument. “Hand must be the Clairvoyant. She’s the highest-ranked SHIELD agent there.”

All gathered nodded just as Skye looked up from her laptop. “There’s been this repeating message over the comm lines. I think I finally figured it out.” She casts her laptop screen up onto the big monitor. They all watch as each letter is decoded and put on the screen.  ***Out of the shadows, into the light.*** Before it flipped screens and slowly revealed the last bit * **Hydra.***

“Hydra? I thought they died after WWII?” Skye asked, her eyes wide and her stance tense.

“They were. That’s when SHIELD was founded.” Coulson crossed his arms.

“Now they’re back, how?” Skye asks. 

“Never died in my opinion. Cut off the head and two grow back,” Alea mutters as the two men get into a war if it was an arm or the head. “Phil, we’ll need to be ready to ditch when we reach the Hub in less than thirty minutes. We’re going after Simmons of course, but if we want to continue to use the Bus we’ll have to disable the Nerve Center.”

“You’re right. Alea you know how to do that, don’t you?” Coulson looked at Alea with this hopeful look in his eyes.

“I better seeing as I built it.” Alea looks around and remembers something that causes her to stop in her tracks. “Phil, every mission that you went on, there are files about them on here isn’t there?” 

“Yes,” Coulson looked at her with a confused look on his face.

“Skye! Get working on pulling everything and wiping the Bus clean. I’ll get to work on somethin’ for the Nerve Center.” Alea runs off to the lab leaving everyone else to talk till they land. Alea worked on rigging up a bomb and packed it into a bag. She finished with it just before she felt the harsh landing from the remote control. 

Fitz came running past her with a device that she knew would look up the hydraulics system on the ramp. “Fitz, you know that won’t keep them out for long right?” 

“Of course, but it will get us some time,” Fitz explains. Alea lets him go and heads upstairs. She watches as May and Coulson go up to the cockpit - probably to try and call Fury. Suddenly guns were going off and bullets coming through the windows and some points in the hull.

Alea ducks down as May and Coulson comes running from the cockpit. All of them make their way down to the lab which hopefully would hold up a bit longer. Alea takes count to make sure that everyone including Ward made it down. “Alright, how much longer do you think it’s going to take for you to back up the files, Skye?” Alea notices May and Coulson slip off to treat May’s gunshot wound. Alea pulls out her phone and turns it off, knowing that they didn’t need to be caught by her phone going off, before putting it back in her pocket.

“Not much longer, but how are we getting out of here?” 

“Fitz, do you have one of those laser-cutting devices?” Alea asks, hoping that the heated conversation that she could hear May and Coulson were having wouldn’t come to blows. 

“I do. Are you suggesting we cut our way out? Where would we go once we get off the Bus?” Fitz pulled out a little pen-like device. 

“The vents.” Coulson walked back into the room looking pissed, but Alea knew that he would mellow back out in a few hours. Alea nodded in agreement. 

“No-one thinks to look in the vents. At least no-one here.” Alea watched as Skye pulled the hard drive free. “Skye, this is so that you can get the Nerve Center down.” Alea hands her the bag that she made up earlier. Skye took the bag, as she tucked her hard drive into her pocket.

“Let’s get on vests and guns loaded. Phil, are we doing live or ICER rounds?” Alea pulls Phil’s gun out of her waistband and puts it on the table. She then reaches up and takes off her glasses placing them next to the gun. Both Coulson and May look at her with shielded looks on their faces. 

“ICERs. I don’t want to risk us injuring true SHIELD agents.” Coulson grabs the gun and watches as Alea gets ready with military precision. The others followed Alea’s lead and soon they were on their way. Alea popped the floor grate about halfway down the cargo area in the front and had Fitz drop down to cut it out with the device. 

“Don’t let the metal hit the ground,” Alea hissed as it got close to cutting all the way through. Ward nodded and grabbed the part that was starting to drop free before it could hit the ground. Fitz dropped though the new cut hole and started another down below as the others stayed crouched around the hole in the Bus. Once Fitz had the second hole started they started to drop one-by-one into it. They easily fell into the vents just before a small bomb went off and Alea heard the ramp drop. She fell down into the hole last and noticed that all of them had gone into the vent going back towards the rest of the hanger.

“Guess I’m leading then,” Alea muttered before heading off towards the main part of the Hub.

Alea knew that Coulson also knew his way through the vents; they both did after having to chase Clint through them so much. Alea knew that they would want to be on the third floor when they got out and headed that way. Alea points to the wall vent that should let them out where they wanted to be and Coulson pushes it open.

"Skye, Ward get to the Nerve Center. Carter, are you going with them or us?" Phil points down the hall that Alea knew led to the Nerve Center.

"You, I have something I want to talk to Hand about." Coulson nods and they head towards the surveillance center. 

They met little resistance on the way there and once they were, Coulson knocked on the door and it was opened by one of the agents. All of them were simply taken out by ICERs. Fitz hurried over to the camera system and Alea followed him over. Alea started to go over and flipped through the various video feeds coming in. 

“Found Hand. She’s at the Eastern Situation room. Still don’t see Simmons or Triplett.” Alea glances up at the others.

“If you are that desperate to save her we do the same thing as we got in here-with the ventilation system. Drop down and put two bullets through Victoria Hand’s heart.” Garrett ranted.

“We could do it,” Alea turns to look at him.

“You were the one that had questions for her though.” Coulson looks at Alea with wide eyes.

“Questioning what, Carter? There aren’t a lot of options now.” 

“Yes, but the last time someone shot without asking questions, we killed the wrong person, and I’m done with doing that.” Alea stood her ground next to Coulson.

*”Because she wanted us to. Phil this is a battle for SHIELD’s soul and we’re on the front lines. History will remember us this day.”

“That’s right, SHIELD’s soul, and murder without consideration-”

“Consideration? Consider this: she had one of my men killed with a bomb rigged to a gas pedal. The other two were floating in the hotel pool and they weren’t doing the backstroke.”

“We could just as easily ICE her,” May interjected standing on Coulson’s side.

“You don’t put someone like her on ice. She had Skye shot in the stomach. In the stomach! Because she was curious. Mike Peterson burned alive and turned into some kind of freak. She tortured you using the same machine that she used to brainwash that bitch in the flower dress.”*

Alea felt Coulson stiffen beside her just before she could feel his mind flood with worry. She knew why too - Coulson had told her through their link that Raina was brainwashed with that machine. It was also a close secret that it had been left here. Alea had also used her healing abilities on him, he knew about them; knew her abilities limits. Alea decided then and there to drop quietly into Garrett’s mind. 

_ Garrett’s mind was a mess. His thoughts were jumbled and she dug through for only a few seconds before she saw what she was looking for; Garrett was the Clairvoyant. Alea pulled herself free just as the doors were shoved open. _

Alea put her hands in the air and got into line with the rest of them at the sight of guns. She slipped into one of the incoming SHIELD agents heads.  _ She started to look around and saw that he was Hydra. She pulled free of his mind. _

“. . .Sitwell filled your ranks, so you know what to do.” 

Alea watched as half of the agents stepped back and shot the others. Then Garrett stepped forward and said, “You’re right Coulson, I am the Clairvoyant. Hail Hydra.”

“Hail Hydra.” the SHIELD agents chorused.

Suddenly the ground shook and the lights flickered before the red emergency lights came on. Alea smiled and ran forward as the lights continued to flicker for a few more seconds. She had punched one of the Hydra men before jumping to the next one. This one hit the floor hard and Alea kicked his head in and he stopped moving. Alea turned to see May taking out two of the others, Fitz hiding under the desk, and Coulson trying to take out Garrett. Once the other two agents were down Alea saw Fitz toss something onto the floor. 

Alea ducked and covered her eyes, not wanting to know if it was a flash bomb when it burned out her retinas. It was one and Alea heard Garrett go down not long after the light fell away. Coulson cuffed him with the pair of handcuffs that Alea was pretty sure he’d had because he was at one point going to use them on her or May.

“Well, that could have gone better.” Alea plops down onto the floor. 

Coulson looked over at Alea, his stance stiff and left arm bleeding. Alea motions for Coulson to come over to her. He does so and she places her right hand over the cut and starts to heal it.

“Carter, did you give Skye a bomb?” May glares at Alea.

“Yes, I was too lazy to try and teach her to hack it. Bombs work. Also didn’t take out any of the data here, it is stored about fifty-feet under us, so yeah, bomb.” Alea gives a lazy smile before pulling her hand away from the now healed cut on Coulson’s arm. 

They all turn when the door opens to reveal Hand and about a dozen or so SHIELD agents, or at least they hope they’re SHIELD. Coulson starts to explain that Garrett was the Clairvoyant, not any of them when Hand stops him. Alea watches as she walks over to the wall and pulls off one of the larger mics that SHIELD had for recognizance missions. 

“Hand, I have a question for you,” Alea stands as Simmons comes running into the room, “ _ if _ you had known two days ago that Fury was dead instead of late last night, would you still have thought that Coulson was the one to kill him?”

“What do you mean? SHIELD didn’t send out a notification until yesterday.” Hand looked straight at Alea.

“He was killed on the ninth. Edwin had sent me a notification the next day.” Alea pulls out her phone and turns it back on to pull up the notification. She sees that there is another notification up on the screen from Edwin’s systems and she pulls it down to read it. It reads  **List narrowed down, J. Garrett is the only person with proper motivations to want to see how P. Coulson was brought back.** Alea bit back a laugh before pulling up the notification that she wanted. 

Once it was up on the phone she turned so that Hand could see it. Hand looked at it and noticed that there was the death certificate and body pick up from Maria Hill attached. “Why wasn’t it sent out until yesterday then?”

“I’m not sure, You'd have to contact Hill about that.” Alea put her phone back.

They then made their way to the Command Center to look over the rest of the damage that was being reported in. Alea stood next to Coulson as they watched a helicarrier cut through the Triskelion. Alea pulled up some of the internal camera feeds that had been backed up and not destroyed. She saw what she expected, and something that she hadn’t, but should have, the Winter Soldier. It seems like Hydra determined this to be a big enough event to bring out the assassin. 

“What should we do with Garrett?” Alea pulls out her phone and places it on the table.

“The Fridge is still ours, I’d say we take him there to rot.” Hand answers. Alea nods in agreement as she hooks up her phone to the console. She starts to download all the information from the Hub to her system. 

“Alea, when you get done here, meet me at the Bus.” Coulson waits for Alea’s nod before leaving. It was calm for now, but Alea knew there would be a storm coming, one that would test this team like nothing else before had.


	3. January 13-15, 2014: Providence and The Only Light in the Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stuff between askrikes comes from either the episode "Providence" or the episode "The Only Light in The Darkness."

Alea was working on getting the Bus back to working order and kinda hated the fact that they’d used a Mousehole to get out of the Bus cause now she had to repair it. She finished smoothing down the welds to the point of them not being an issue. She goes up to the ramp to see sparks raining down from the hole in it. 

“Triplett, I want to talk to you for a minute.” Alea goes over to the spiral staircase. He nods and follows her up the stairs and into the Cage. Alea shuts the door before she starts to talk, “I want to make sure you’re SHIELD and not Hydra. I heard that you wanted to come with us and Coulson will trust what I’m about to do.”

“Alright, but I have to ask, have you done the others?” he asked.

“I have. At least all that is here.” Alea looks Triplett in the eye and falls into his head. 

_ Alea shifts though when he joined SHIELD. Nothing about Hydra there. She slid forward to many of the missions with either Sitwell or Garrett. Again nothing about Hydra. She pulled on his head and allowed his memories to surround her. She looked for anything about Hydra, and the only thing that she found before SHIELD started to fall apart was stories from his grandfather, Gabe Jones, and history classes. Alea did one last look before pulling free of his head. _

“Your eyes were purple.” Triplett looked down at Alea with wonderment on his face.

“Yep, I was in your head. That’s how I check your allegiance, by sifting through your head until I find either something that proves that you are Hydra or not.” Alea opens the door and walks out of the Cage with Triplett following. They get to the stairs by the time that Coulson shows up. 

“Triplett will be coming with us. I’ve done the same thing I’ve done for the rest of the team.” Alea states watching him. He nods before saying, “Then get ready for take-off. We’re leaving in ten.” 

“Why?” 

“Brigadier General Glenn Talbot, you remember him don’t you?” Coulson made his way up the stairs.

“Unfortunately. Are we going to enact Odyssey Protocol?” Alea walked with Coulson through the plane. Coulson nods. Alea goes up to the cockpit and sis down next to May. “Coulson was mad about the phone line wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

"I know Fury was planning this team before Coulson asked me about the scientists that I would recommend. Was Fury planning it with you originally?” Alea looked over at May watching her face as she thought about her answer.

“Yes. It was because he wasn’t too sure about Project TAHITI, seeing as he didn’t oversee it.”

“No, Fury didn’t. It was a team of two that worked on it as far as I know. I don’t even have the full files and you know that I have most files in full, but if I had to guess Hill knows where the rest are at.” Alea stands and leaves the cockpit. She sees Coulson coming though the plane checking in on everyone. 

“So, we have medical supplies, but only a few days of rations. We have no way of cloaking,” that earns Alea a glare from Coulson, “We have a busted fuel line and only four hours of fuel. The only good thing is the fact that we have internet.” 

Alea nods as she watched Skye leave the main area and down to where the others undoubtedly were. “What’s Skye doing?” 

“Gathering the other’s badges. We don’t need to be waving them around now that SHIELD has been branded as a terrorist organization.” 

Alea reaches down into her pocket before pulling out her badge. She’d had it since she was fifteen and first joined SHIELD. She’d hardly left it anywhere since then and she flipped it open to show both the old SHIELD logo on the bottom and then her ID which was somewhat faded. She handed it over to him after closing it back up. “I wouldn’t keep them after we find someplace to stay. They worked to earn them, so they should get to keep them. Hell, the few agents that do make it to retirement we mark the IDs and they keep them. They can keep them in their rooms.” Coulson nods in agreement. 

Alea heads down to the lab to help sort through all the equipment that had been added to the Bus when they were at the Hub. Alea watches as Skye goes around and gets the badges. Simmons cried over hers, and Triplett quiet and resigned. She saw Fitz come back into the lab and he was silent. Skye came over to her and held her hand out. “Your badge.”

“Coulson already has it. I think the plan is that once we get a stable place and I can mark them as inactive Coulson will give the badges back, but for now they’re a liability if you decide to pull them out like you’re used to doing.” Alea starts to move boxes so that she can go through them. Skye nods and heads back upstairs.

“Carter.” Triplett pulls out a box and moves it over to the table to be unpacked.

“Yes?” 

“Is there anywhere that we can go? I mean SHIELD’s gone, we had four bases under our control, and the US Government is taking those over.” 

“There are a few that were either old SSR bases and left off SHIELD’s asset list or Fury left it off the list because he’s a paranoid bastard.” Alea starts to put things away.

**“Coulson wants all of you up in command now.”** It was May who called for them over the intercom.

Alea led the way up. When they got there Skye was pulling up coordinates on the screen. Alea watched as they pointed to somewhere in the Canadian Tundra. 

“Where did we even get these coordinates from?” Alea asked trying to remember if that was one of the locations that the Koenig brothers’ were at.

Coulson held up what had to be his badge before saying, “The person who gave me this badge, well let’s just say this is right up his alley.”

“How sure are we that it isn’t going to be a trap?” Simmons asks.

Alea thought back and realized that Fury had re-issued Coulson his badge when he came to be the head of SHIELD. That badge was one of three that were wired to a system that Fury managed at her house that had the highest level of security and wasn't a part of SHIELD. 

“Even if Fury is dead, that system with Coulson’s badge is really hard to be compromised. I set it up originally because of Edwin and now it hosts a few other things that I didn’t want SHIELD to have a hold of. Point is Edwin would have notified me if it was compromised before shutting it down.” Alea explains.

May looks at Alea out of the corner of her eye while Skye asks, “Do you know of a base at those coordinates then?” 

“I think so. It’s really cold up there, so I don’t have a tendency to  _ want _ to go there willingly, but yeah I think so.” Alea leans forward and looks closely at the mountain range. 

“Skye, find me a clearing to land the Bus in.” May walks off to the cockpit while Alea and Coulson go up to the latter’s office.

“What do you need, Alea?” Coulson turns to Alea as the door slides shut.

“We’re going somewhere cold. I was wondering if you had one of my heating suits onboard.” Alea sits down on the couch.

“I do. It’s in the closet at the bottom.” Coulson points at the small door to one side. Alea nods and gets up to change clothes. She grabs the thin suit and heads to the small room that was Coulson’s bunk. She quickly had the skintight suit on and turned it on and fell down the entire thing with her right hand making sure it was still working before turning it off and putting her clothes back on top. She headed back out to Coulson’s office and sat across from him again. She noticed that he had his wedding ring on his left hand. It made sense that he would start to wear it now that SHIELD regulations weren’t keeping him from wearing it.

“Alea.”

“Yes, Phil?” 

“You told me that you knew something about how I was brought back. Now that SHIELD has fallen will you tell me?” 

“No.” Alea felt as if all the air had left the room. 

“Why not?” Coulson might as well have been yelling. Alea felt that if he had yelled she could have calmed him down to a point of forgetting, but the calm worried her.

“I don’t want to lose you.” Alea stands and leaves the room. She hurried down to the lab to find one of the extra thick winter coats that were on the jet. She then went to grab a small assortment of small metal things, because if they can’t see it they can be sure that Fury’s done something to protect it.

Alea helped the others get the jackets situated and managed to find a hat to put on before they landed was a miracle. Once they were on the ground they all gathered on the ramp. Coulson came down the stairs and looked at the gathered agents. “You do not have to come with me, but you should know that NSA satellites will sweep over in about an hour. We are agents of SHIELD and even though we are possibly the last ones out there that care it means that we are the SHIELD that protects people from the unknown and Hydra right now is a big unknown.” Coulson starts off the Bus.

“I think all of us know that, Phil,” Alea answers as she follows him. She hears everyone else following. They start walking towards the coordinates and it does start to look familiar to Alea. She’d had Edwin at one point or another run through the routes to this base, cause the cold sucked. Eventually, they made it to the coordinates, and Alea pulled out one of the small metal objects and tossed it towards the cliff. A turret rose and shot it out of the sky and all of them ducked behind rocks. 

“We found something. Not sure if it’s a good thing or not.” Alea turned and smiled at Triplett. 

“Oh, it’s good. Notice that it isn’t shooting at us. Just what I tossed,” Alea whispered. Coulson stood up and announced himself to the thin air before part of the wall opened up. Alea was the next to stand and she walked to the door, done with the cold. Alea was the first though the door, mostly because she didn’t seem to care about safety.

As soon as all of them were inside the door started to slide close, then a plump man came running from one of the side halls. Skye seemed to be the first to find her voice, *”What is this place?”

“One of Fury's secret bases. I call it Providence, although technically it doesn't have a name because technically it doesn’t exist, it being a secret base and all.”* The plump man straightened the badge that was around his neck.

“Ah, so this is Providence. Hello, Eric.” Alea gives a small wave.

“Agent Carter, who are the other people with you?” Eric asks.

“Agents, Phil Coulson, Antonie Triplett, Jimma Simmons, Leopold Fitz, and Skye. Agents, this is Agent Eric Koenig.” Alea introduces with a wave of a hand. 

“Agents Coulson, Carter you will be getting badges here soon, the rest will be given once I know for sure that you aren’t Hydra.” Koenig starts walking and the rest follow. 

“What about Fury, did he send you here?” Coulson steps up next to Koenig. 

“No, I’m sorry to say that Fury never made it out of DC.” Alea looks at Koenig suspectly but doesn’t say anything to contradict him either. It shocks the rest into silence as they follow Koenig through the tunnels. “The Fridge has also fallen now.” That causes Skye to gasp before pulling out what had probably been Coulson’s old cell phone that he carried for work. They make it to a small, well-furnished room that he says that they can rest in while he talks to both Alea and Coulson. “Who is she calling?” 

“One of our team went to the Fridge.” Coulson stops Koenig from making it to Skye.

They followed him off to a room that was the room that Koenig used as an office if the papers and laptop were any indications. They stand facing him as he rambles on about something about Coulson. “Koenig, you had something that you wanted to tell us?” Alea interjects tired of hearing the same thing that she had heard from his brother.

“Ah, yes, Carter I’m sure you know about the Eclipse Protocol?” Koenig looked at Alea who nodded. “Well, part of that is that only a few people are to know what I’m about to tell both of you, Fury’s alive. Made it out of DC, though Hydra thinks they killed him, so the limited number of people who know.” 

“Figures. I didn’t think Hill would take a dead body to an abandoned bunker when SHIELD was falling apart at its seams.” Alea walked over to one of the chairs and sat down. She feels Koenig staring at her and looks over her shoulder at him. “I had a tracker on both Fury and Hill. They were at the same abandoned bunker in Virginia. The process of elimination means that Fury at least had a chance of living through whatever happened to him in DC.” 

Koenig nodded and pulled two badges out of his desk. He handed one each to the other two. Alea looked at her badge; it was simple with a holographic SHIELD logo over the duel orange and white plastic. There was a barcode at the bottom and when she flipped it over there the only thing on it was her name. She tossed it over her head after she pulled off her jacket. 

Coulson leaves after getting notification that Ward has reached the base and Alea stays put. Koenig looks at her with questioning eyes and she answers with, “I know you and your brothers at least a little at this point and I know how you feel about having people that you don’t know knowing about this place.” 

“You’re right.” 

“Want me to go get that fancy Lie Detector ready?”

“Why don’t you. I’m going to go find them.” 

Alea nods and walks off towards where she knew that Fury kept the bloody lie detector. It was an engineering marvel and Alea was one of the few people that could beat the thing without a way to create pain to create altered reactions. She and Nat are the only ones that could beat it. It pissed Fury off to no end that they could still beat it. She got the thing started up and found the list of questions that Koenig was going to use and got them to put on the table just in time for Koenig to come in with the others. 

Koenig gives the spiel about the lie detector and Alea steps out of the room holding back laughs as all the agents, exuding Coulson and Koenig, point at one another when Coulson asks who wanted to go first. Coulson joins her in the hall and they walk down to the main room to talk while the agents are screened. 

“So, who are you taking and where are you going?” Alea asked sitting back.

“We’re headed to Portland to track down Daniels. I’m taking a small splinter team: FitzSimmons and Triplett.” Coulson sits down across from Alea. Alea raises her eyebrow and crosses her arms.

“Not taking May?” 

“No, I need her to work on fixing the Bus.” 

“You know I could do that. I’m sure May would be an asset in taking down Daniels.” Alea leans forward and places her hands in her lap.

“I need you working with Skye. We need to find out where the rest of the people from the Fridge went.” 

“You want me to bring back up the SHIELD satellites? Cause that ain't going to be happening.” 

Coulson’s eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped. After a second he seemed to recover enough to ask, “Wait, why?”

“Cause when they went down they went into a standby mode that without direct access to my computer in Virginia I can’t bring them back up.”

“You’re still staying here. Help Skye.” Coulson stands and leaves the room. Alea makes no move to leave the room. Instead, she sits back and allows herself to fall into her mind.

_ She makes her way to where her links were and notices that Barnes’s is pulsing weirdly. Alea decides to go down it and is surprised by what she finds. A memory of him and Rogers from the forties stares back at her the moment she makes it to his head.  _

_ Alea decides that finding out what Barnes is currently seeing is more important than processing the fact that he had a memory that she had locked away. Her thought is that she didn’t want to be in his mind if Hydra decided that a mind wipe was what Barnes needed.  _

_ Alea looked out his ‘eyes’ to see something odd, he wasn’t near anyone Hydra. He was sitting on top of the apartment building that Alea knew was near where he grew up. Alea decided to return to sifting through his memories. Eventually, she found some of the memories from when SHIELD fell. She saw Bucky and Rogers fighting on the helicarrier. Rogers trying to free Bucky from underneath a steel beam. Rogers falling into the Potomac. Bucky pulled him back out after jumping into the Potomac. She saw him walking back to one of the abandoned banks and telling some Hydra agents that Rogers is dead.  _

_ Alea then sees some of his memories from his childhood. These were just glimpses and Rogers was in most of those as well. Alea went deeper into his head to his memory wall that she put up to see a small hole that was growing larger the longer that she looked at it. She decided to leave it as it was, for now, knowing that he was already confused. She headed back to the part of his mind that she knew that she could talk to him. _

_ “Hello, can you hear me?”  _

_ A version of what she assumed that Bucky looked like right now formed in front of her. “I can, who are you and why can you get into my mind?” _

_ “I am Alea Carter, and I am the goddaughter and adopted daughter of former SSR Officer Margaret Carter. I am a former agent of SHIELD, and I built the arm that you use now.” _

_ “Back in ninety, I remember you a little.” Alea watched the memory of her standing over Bucky one of the few times he’d been awake form around them. _

_ Alea nodded. “I wanted to see what happened to you. I knew that you had been sighted around DC, but then you vanished. I wondered if you had gotten free of Hydra.” _

_ Bucky nodded and his thoughts ran wild around them. Moments that he was both an agent of Hydra and during his time of the Howling Commandos. Alea saw a small red book in a lot of the Hydra memories. “Do you know what that red book was?”  _

_ “I think it was what they kept the records of what they did to me.”  _

_ Alea nods and goes looking for that red book and finds something that disturbed her. A whole part of his mind that was walled off. Alea touched it and recoiled when the feelings of anger and disgust assaulted her. She turned and saw Bucky standing next to her. _

_ “What is this? It isn’t the place that the memories were locked away at.” _

_ “No, I have a feeling that this was Hydra’s doing. I’m going to go walk around it.” Alea starts to look around the wall. She came to a small opening and went through it to see words floating around. They were: Longing, Rusted, Seventeen, Daybreak, Furnace, Nine, Benign, Homecoming, One, Freight Car. _

_ Alea then realized that it must be a way for them to make sure that Bucky could be under their control. Alea leaves the area and starts to wall it away. It takes hours for her to do so, but when she was done she was sure that the Winter Soldier wasn’t returning. She returns to looking through the memories that he had. A Lot of the ones with the Howling Commandos she could remember her mother or the others talking about when she was little. It was interesting to see them even if they were only bits and pieces of them. _

_ “I’m surprised that you’re not tired, Ms. Carter,” Bucky says, forming next to her again. _

_ “Call me Alea. Also, that means some significant amount of time has passed. What time is it?” Alea looks over at him. _

_ “It’s just past six am. You’ve been in my head since just after midnight the day before.”  _

_ Alea was stunned into silence. She had never stayed in someone’s mind that long after not sleeping since the day before. “I don’t feel tired, but I shall leave you be for now. Goodbye, Bucky.” _

_ “Goodbye, Alea.” _

Alea pulls free of his mind to see Coulson sitting in front of her. His face was tense and he had an expression that kinda scared her. 

“What’s up?”

“Do you know where the rest of the team is?”


	4. January 15, 2014: Nothing Personal

Alea’s jaw dropped as she tried to process what Coulson just said. “Is no-one here?”

“Nope, the Bus is gone and I haven’t seen anyone.”

“Shit, I’d been in Bucky Barnes’s head. I really hadn’t noticed the passage of time.” Alea tries to stand and ends up on her face. “You know it’s always fun when you cannot feel the fact that parts of your body have gone to sleep. Also a bit light-headed.”

Coulson leaned over and helped Alea get back on the couch. “So, we don’t know where the hell any of them are.” 

“Nope, I’d check security feeds.”

Coulson nods and Fitz comes into the room. “Sir, you’re not going to like this.” 

“What now?”

“The security feeds from inside have been wiped. We have nothing outside and we might have the hanger feed.” Fitz leaves.

Alea and Coulson both stand and walk towards the information center. Once they got there there was just static on the screens. Fitz fiddled with something until the feed of the Bus’s ramp was pulled up on the screen. They watched as May left with a bag in hand and eventually Skye and Ward walked on, hand-in-hand.

“Does the door records have May leaving the base?” Alea asked.

It takes Fitz a second to pull it up. “It does. She left not long after she got off the Bus.” 

“So, at that time Koenig was still here and Skye and Ward left not long after. Koening isn’t shown to get onto the Bus either and there aren’t any other ways to get on or off easily.” Alea leans on the table.

“There’s got to have been a way.” Coulson leans forward staring at the screen.

“Only other way onto the Bus is through the landing gear, and that’s only because of a hatch that I put in when we were redoing it. It’s not on any official plans of the thing and most people wouldn’t try to do it cause it isn’t a pleasant flight to get stuck there,” Alea explains. 

“We should eat. I’m going to go find something.” Simmons stands and makes her way out of the room. At first, Triplett moves to follow, but Fitz beats him to it. 

“Have we always had someone hidden in our ranks?” Coulson mutters just loud enough for the other two to hear.

Triplett sits up and says, “It looks like it. Carter, you didn’t ever do the thing that you did with the rest of us after the fall of SHIELD did you?” 

“No, I didn’t think he’d be able to cheat the lie detector. I’m one of two people able to beat it straight out, no tricks. He must have used the fact that he was injured to his advantage if he is Hydra.” Alea stands and walks over to Coulson.

It’s then that they hear Simmons scream. Alea darts off in the direction of the storage room. When she gets there she sees Simmons over in the corner with the stuff to make pancakes on the floor. Simmons was staring up at something in one of the racks and she looked up to see Koenig. Alea goes over to Simmons.

“Simmons, come let’s go get the others.” Alea pulls on Simmons' arm and she goes willingly where Alea directs her. As soon as they made it out of the room both Triplett and Coulson had made it down there. “Koenig’s dead. He’s up in the racks in storage. I don’t think I’d be able to get him back down on my own.” Alea passes Simmons over to Coulson.

“Go get something for us to move him to medical. I’m sure you and Triplett can get him down.” Coulson directs Simmons down to the small medical room and Alea follows. Alea gets one of the examiner tables before rolling it back to the storage room. The two of them get Koenig onto the table before moving him back into the medical area. Fitz joined them and he looked shaken up.

“Fitz, what’s up?” Alea asked as they covered most of Koenig with one of the blue sheets.

“One of the windows has ‘Ward is Hydra’ carved into it.” Fitz leans against the wall. 

Alea doesn’t say anything about that. It was probably true. “Simmons, if you would do the medical examination.” Coulson motions to Koenig’s body. 

Simmons nods and starts to look at the marks on Koenig’s neck. Alea knew that it had been done with a wire, but since she didn't look at it too hard on the way over she wasn’t sure about much else. It takes a while before Simmons covers the body the rest of the way.

“The trachea is crushed and partially cut, leading to asphyxiation. He was killed about ten hours ago after May left.” Simmons' voice was this forced calm. “The angle of the cut indicated that the killer is at least six foot two. . . and strong enough to lift Koenig onto the rack. . .” Simmons turns to Coulson. “Sir, it had to have been Ward.”

Fitz ran over to the other side of the room and tossed some of the stuff off the table. Coulson ran over and tried to calm him down. After while Fitz headed out of the room muttering about the communications system.

“Alea, go with Fitz. I want comms back up so we can find Skye.” Alea nods and runs after Fitz. Fitz was mumbling about hooking up the comms system to the jump jet’s power. 

“That could work.” Alea helps him get it wired up while making sure that it won’t drain too much power because they can’t risk using too much of it and not being able to take off. They got it rigged up and Alea was about to head back when she heard the perimeter breach warning go off. 

“Great, either Hydra or Talbot have found us.” Alea moves over to get both her and Fitz back into the main bunker. They get in just before Alea sees Coulson come around the corner with a rifle. “Have we determined if it was Talbot or Hydra. Cause I’d take Talbot over Hydra.”

“No, are you armed?” Coulson looks over at her.

“Not really, I mean I have my arm and that’s about it.”

“Go get some supplies, I have a feeling that we will be leaving here in a hurry.” 

Alea runs off to get a bag together of things that she knew they wouldn’t have even if they got the Bus back. She found four of the single breath oxygen tanks in the corner and shoved all of them into the bag. She found a few other gadgets and also shoved them into the bag before heading back out. She saw Hill escorting Coulson and knew that it was Talbot that was here. She ducked into a room, hopefully before Hill saw her.

“Carter, don’t even think about it.” Hill must have seen her then. She stepped into the hall and walked to Hill. They stepped into the command room, and Alea tuned most of the conversation out. Instead, she watched for Talbot and his men. She didn’t want to end up with a bullet in herself and she knew that these men wouldn't hesitate to shoot someone who looked like a literal child.

“Alea,” Hill caught her attention before continuing, “Do you know if it is true that Ward is Hydra?” 

“He has to be the mole. I checked the rest of the team personally.” Alea reached up and took off her glasses and slid them into her pants pockets.

“Let’s get your agent back.” Hill looked at Coulson before Talbot walked into the room. All three of them attacked.

Alea led with a left hook that took the closet man by surprise and he ended up on the floor. She turned to the next man and led with a high kick that the man dodged. This led to her being off balance. He attempted to land a hit, but Alea did a cartwheel to get out of the way. She dodged the next hit as well and grabbed the fist before using her much lower center of gravity to her advantage. She flipped the man over her back before dropping down on top of him and landing a clean hit to his kidney with her left arm. He attempted to toss her off but was unsuccessful in the endeavor and Alea knocked him out with a clean hit to the head. 

She looked over at the others to see all of Talbot’s men on the floor. She picked the backpack back up and they headed to get the rest of the team. They headed out to the jet with Alea taking the pilot’s seat.

She landed the jet near the Bus and taxied it to the point of facing the Bus. She feels Hill tense next to her. They saw movement in the front of the Bus and Alea felt the tension rise. “SHIELD 616, stand down. You have thirty seconds. I repeat you have thirty seconds.”

Alea takes off her headset not wanting to listen to what Ward had to say. She knew that they weren’t planning on following. Just distracting Ward long enough that Coulson could get to the landing gear and get on. After about another minute of Hill and Ward trading barbs, Alea hears the Bus kick up before taking off. 

“That was fun wasn’t it?” 

“I want to strangle that man. Or should I let Romanoff do it seeing as Ward suggested that she was mostly eye-candy?” Hill pulled off her headset.

“Then he never saw her fight. Cause, let me tell you I have fought both of them and Nat’s about ten leagues above him in that area.”

Hill nods and they wait on the airstrip until they get word from Coulson that they’re somewhere in LA still. Alea allows them to figure out where they are going to stay and will meet them there.

“You know that Phil won’t ever do what you did, right?” 

“Go to the private sector?” 

Alea nods. “He’s worked for SHIELD too long. Never really know a life without it.” 

Before Hill could answer Alea got a text that they needed to meet up at one of the motels in the city. Alea gets the jet situated at the airfield before renting a couple of cars and heading to the motel. It was just starting to get dark when they got there and Skye handed them the room keys before Hill asked where Coulson was. Skye answered and Alea stayed with the rest of the team around the pool as Hill went to talk to Coulson. 

“So, how was the flight in Lola?” Alea sat down across from Skye.

“Not the best. Probably would have been better had the system not been shot.”

Alea nods and lays her head down on the table. It had been a long few days and all she wanted to do was sleep, but until she talked to Coulson again she knew she wasn’t going to get any. She saw Coulson come down to the table and felt him put his hand on her back before walking off. When he came back he forced her to sit up, which caused her head to swim. 

“Alea, when was the last time you ate?” Coulson’s voice was fuzzy to Alea, but she got most of what he asked.

“Yesterday, or maybe the day before? Not real sure.” She felt Coulson shove something into her hand, and knowing him it was some type of food. She looked down at it and figured how to get the wrapper off before eating the entire thing in a few bites. 

“Come, Alea, we’re going to sleep.” Coulson pulled her out of the seat and up to one of the rooms. Alea wasn’t aware of why they stopped at the door until she forced herself to focus and saw that May was standing in the room. Coulson laid Alea down on the bed before addressing May.

Alea doesn’t hear much as she drifts off into sleep, but she does hear May mention TAHITI. Alea figured that she might have found the logs that she and Coulson did as she fell asleep. 


	5. January 16, 2014: Ragtag

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stuff between asterisks comes directly from Marvel's Agents of SHIELD season 1 episode 22; "Ragtag."

Alea woke to a conversation happening around her. She could tell that someone was sitting beside her, mostly due to how warm she was. She opened her eyes to see FitzSimmons on the other bed in the room. She moved her head to see Coulson and May standing in the front. Coulson had made a graph that Alea could tell was all the connections about the things they had dealt with. He’d done them in the past when the tech wasn’t as good. Or when Clint wasn’t understanding why they needed to take out that man instead of the one they were sent to find. 

Alea sat up and Coulson looked straight at her. “What?” 

“Alea, do you know of any low-powered tech? I saw you had a bag earlier.”

“Nothing really good if we want to go undetected.” Alea notices that Triplett wasn’t there at all. It had been Skye sitting next to her. 

There was a knock on the door and Coulson went over and opened the door. It was Triplett and he had a familiar yellow case with him. It was one of the old Howling Commandos trunks. “You have some fun toys there Triplett.” Alea unearths herself from the bed so that Triplett could lay the case down.

“You know what’s in it?” Skye gets up as well.

Alea doesn’t say anything as the trunk was opened. Coulson and Triplett both geek out over the things in the trunk. Alea doesn’t notice when Skye picks up the EMP and sets it off. She felt her arm give out and hit her side.

Alea stops Fitz from even grabbing the laser cigarettes. “Fitz, don’t. They have a high powered laser in them and I don’t want you burning the room. We’ve already kicked the power and my arm. Phil, come help me get it back online.” Alea walks over to the other room and pulls a small toolkit from her pocket. She heard Coulson join her before shutting the door.

Coulson walks over to her and helps her get both shirt and jacket off. She opened the toolkit before handing it over her shoulder to him. “You know, you should think about moving the reboot to the front, where you can access it even without your full toolkit.”

“Not easily done,” Alea mutters as Phil pulls one of the smallest Allen wrenches out and slid it into the area just beside her shoulder bolt on her back. He turned it two full turns before switching to a place on the lower part of her arm, just above the elbow. He does two twists again. 

“Try now.”

Alea spends a second focusing and then she moves a few fingers. She grabs her clothes and puts them back on. Coulson closes back up the toolkit and hands it to Alea. She puts the toolkit back in her pocket. They head back out to discuss what they are going to do. 

Eventually, it’s settled that Coulson and Alea would be going into Cybertek. They would be pitching the idea of her arm to them. They got on the move using a rented trailer and truck. They had bought a change of much more nerdy-looking clothes then Coulson’s suit and Alea’s military-looking jacket and cargo pants at the local Goodwill. Alea now in a pants suit and Coulson in a cardigan and yellow plaid button-down. They had also found Coulson a pair of glasses.

“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t use the ICER rounds,“ Fitz muttered. He and Simmons were in the back of the trailer ready to give Coulson a bit more information if needed. May was also in the trailer, more for if they needed her, with Skye and Triplett in the cab of the truck. Alea smiled at him. “This is more like what Cybertek wants.” Alea slides on a pair of black gloves. 

She and Coulson head into the building. Alea allows for Coulson to take the lead and get them to the interview room. They both sit across from the interviewer and Coulson leads with the fact that they had been SHIELD scientists. Alea turned on the pin.

“What do you have to show?”

Alea unbuttons the cuff of her jacket and rolls it up before pulling off the glove. “This. A working cybernetic arm. I programmed it and he built it.” 

“We have cybernetics already.” 

** “Guys, there are no computers there. Like at all. Though the building plans so something promising in the middle of the fourth floor.” **

Alea grimaces at Skye’s report. “Nothing like this though. It connects to a base that connects to the nerves. Almost painless too. No need for sensors embedded. Takes less time to get used to too, cause after you remember how to move your fingers it just unlocks the rest of it.” 

“It’s made out of light-weight metal and constructed to fit the body of the wearer. Her’s is even wrapped around her shoulder even though it only fully replaces up to her elbow. This allows for more stability.”

“We’ve seen tech like this already. Someone from Hydra brought them in.” 

“Ah, so you’re not going to hire us are you?” 

“No, though I thank you for coming.” 

** “See they didn’t like it. Bet they would have liked the ICERs”  ** Fitz snarked.

They all stand and shake hands. Coulson and she were led to the elevator and they got on and allowed the one escorting them to start up the elevator before Alea knocked him out with a clean hit to the head. Alea hit the button four the fourth floor. The doors opened and Alea led the way down the hall. 

** “Middle of the hall. Reinforced door.” **

Alea spotted a man just down the hall that looked at the red phone on the wall. Alea started running at the same time and reached it just before he did. He reached for her hand that was on the phone, but Alea grabbed his wrist with her other hand while she put the phone back. She then tossed him over her shoulder before dropping down on top of him. He passes out after a few seconds of struggling to get Alea off his chest.

“That went well.” Coulson helps Alea off the ground. Alea nodded and they headed onwards towards the door. It wasn’t hard to tell which one was the right door and Coulson pulled out the laser cigarettes and turned one of them on. He cut around the door handle and it opened up. 

“Holy crap.” Alea walked into the room and looked around at the filing cabinets filling the room.

** “What?” **

Alea walks down one row to see if she could figure out where the D files were at. She finds them and starts to narrow down where the Deathlok files were. Alea pulls out the topmost drawer and looks at the dates. All the way back to 1990. “Coulson, get over here.” 

Coulson walks over and looks at the file in Alea’s hand. “They’ve been working on Deathlok for that long?” Alea steps aside to let Coulson look through the files and he finds one labeled  _ Garrett, John.  _ He flips it open and Alea sees information that kinda scares her. Part of Garrett’s side had been replaced with cybernetics. 

“Garret was patient zero.” Coulson shoves the file back into the cabinet before starting to move it over to the window. *”Skye, Trip, get ready for a large file transfer.”

** “How large?” ** *

Alea helps him get it out the window and Alea wishes she could see their faces as she hears it hit the ground. She waits for Triplett to shoot the grapple line so they can get down. It doesn’t take him long and both Alea and Coulson make it out of the building before anyone else makes it up to the floor. They duck into the trailer as Triplett gets the truck in motion. Once they get back to the motel they start to go through the files. “Skye, can I see your laptop?” 

Skye nods and hands the laptop over to Alea after unlocking it. Alea plugs her phone into it. “Edwin, get working on some of the Hydra stuff that Cybertek would need. Also any information on the Bus.” 

** “Yes, my dear.” **

Alea watches as information goes across the screen as Fitz starts to fight the fact that Ward was Hydra. Skye runs off to her room. May follows Skye and Alea turns to Fitz. “Fitz, I know you don’t like change, but Ward is Hydra. There is no way that he isn’t. He was a recruit that Garrett had brought in. I’m pretty sure that he’s a sociopath if not a psychopath.”

** “My dear, I have tracked Hydra to Cuba. Havana to be exact.”  **

“Thanks, Edwin.” Alea pulls her phone free of the connecting cable. Coulson gets up to inform Skye while Alea gets all of it packed up so they could take it with them on the jet. They head off to Havana with everything that they have gathered. They left the truck and trailer behind. Though they had loaded up Lola. Once on the jet, Alea pulls the four single breath oxygen tanks and tucks them into her cargo pants pockets.

“I’m going to go with FitzSimmons to try and find the Bus.” Coulson nods and Alea pulls the other two over to one of the cars. Once there Alea allows Simmons to take the diver’s seat as she gets Edwin set up. “Ed, have you hit the tracker on the Bus yet?” 

** “Approximately an hour from where you are now.”  ** Edwin pulls the coordinates along with directions on the phone. They head off. Once near enough they ditch the car in the ditch. They walk up to a little hut and contact Coulson.

“Hey, found the Bus,” Alea starts.

** “Good. Where are you?”  **

“At least three hours from you. You want us to do anything?”

** “No, we have the tracker.” **

“Alright.” Alea closes the call with Coulson.

“Well, well, well. Look who showed up.” Alea turns to see Ward standing in the hut’s door. They willingly go with him. The Bus’s ramp closes as they get on. The Bus takes off before they even make it to the stairs. Their lead up to the gallery and as they are being patted down Garrett is boasting about something or another. Alea is more watching what Ward pulled out of Fitz’s pocket, one of the joy buzzer EMPs. Fitz reaches out and hits the top of it and everything goes dark. Alea feels her arm go limp and unresponsive as Garrett screams.

All three of them take off running. They make it down the stairs and to the medical pod. Alea engages the locking mechanism. “Good idea, Fitz. The only problem is that now I have one working arm and we’re in a tiny ejectable box.”

“What?” Came from the other two.

“The interchangeable pods can be ejected mid-flight. It was made this way so in theory a bomb could be ejected in one without damage to the crew.” Alea moves to lean against the wall. FitzSimmons moves to the door to plead with Ward not to eject them when he comes down. He still does and Alea experienced the moment of weightlessness before they hit the water and she was knocked into the wall by the force, knocking her out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I just finished my college classes. Now just to wait for all of the grades to be put into our grading system. Hope you all are safe in the troubling times! 
> 
> Also it's been a year since I first posted this work! I'd just gotten done with my first year of college and another year gone and I'm posting the fifth chapter in the twenty-first part of the series, my what a year.


	6. January 17 & 18, 2014: Beginning of the End

Alea woke to a busting head and very little sight. She could see a blinking red light as she rolled over. “We’re at the bottom of the ocean aren’t we?” 

“Yep, and no way out.” That was Fitz. 

Alea moved to stand and saw that it was the EKG that was blinking. “Got a weak emergency signal there?” Alea points at the EKG while taking stock of the other two’s injuries. Fitz had a sling on, meaning that he’d probably broken it, but other than that it didn’t seem to be anything major.

“Yes, but it’s a SHIELD signal, no-one’s looking for them.” Simmons slid down the wall.

“Edwin might pick it up, but if there’s no-one that he can signal we’re stuck.” Alea felt her arm come back online by itself and moved the fingers. “Well, my arm’s back.” Alea felt into her pockets to find that two of the oxygen takes had broken, and her phone was as well.

“Hey, have we thought about the fact that we have a window? I mean we can’t break the window, not even with my arm, but the seal, we’re in a medical pod.”

“The seal is made from a material with a high flash point, but medical ethanol has a low flashpoint and burns hotter!” At first, it was just Simmons, but Fitz joins in after a second. The two start jumping before Fitz kneels over from the pain in his arm.

“Yep, now we have to do it soon.” The two nod and they get to work. Alea sees Fitz do something with the oxygen tank. “So, I have two single breath oxygen tanks on me and if we do something to that one to let out a high-pressure burst of oxygen we will all have a breath on the way up.”

The other two nod and Alea hands one of the tanks to Simmons, but when she goes to hand the other to Fitz he holds up the breath mask. Alea nods. “Simmons, when that blows keep this between your teeth. Fitz, careful not to let the pressure cause you to take another breath.” 

They both nod. Simmons and Alea both place the tanks in place, breaking the seal with their teeth, and Fitz takes a breath before pressing the defibrillator button. There was a flash of light before water rushed into the pod. Alea sees Simmons grab a hold of Fitz, who was trying to swim, but not doing well. Alea leaves the pod after Fitz and has to work hard to get herself up to the surface. About halfway up Alea sees Fitz let out his breath. They all made it to the surface, but by the time Fitz’s head broke the water he was unconscious. 

Alea can just barely hear the sound of a jet engine as Simmons yells for help. She turns her head to see Fury on the edge of a dropdown. She waits for him to get FitzSimmons into the jet before reaching up for Fury to pull her up. “I hope you have a few hyperbaric chambers on board.” 

Fury nods and Alea sees a few agents move Simmons to one as Fury leads Alea over to another one. Alea lays down on the table before it is retracted into the chamber. “Fury, where exactly are you going to take us?” 

“The base that Billy Koenig’s at.” Alea nods. 

She watches as Fury moves around watching for Simmons to wake or news about Fitz. Eventually, Alea falls asleep. She woke when she was jostled. She turned to see one of the older SHIELD doctors releasing her from the chamber. She sits up as soon as she is clear of the chamber.

“We’re where we are dropping you off. We will be joining you to watch over Mr.Fitz” 

Alea nods and helps Simmons get her bearings as they let her free of her chamber as well. “Do you know where we are?” Alea nods as they stand. Fury comes up to them and Alea sees what he had in his hand. It was a small black and silver box.

“You giving Coulson the Toolbox?” 

Fury nods. Alea heads out with Simmons. They get off the jet to be met by Billy Koenig. “Don’t you dare start Koenig. I’m taking Simmons upstairs so that we can shower and get a change of clothes. I can feel the salt every time I shift my arm.” Alea leads Simmons though the base and up a set of stairs.

“That wasn’t Eric was it?”

“Nope, Billy. I know of at least three Koenigs that look the same. Billy, Eric, and Sam. Anyway I think that you’re close to me in clothing size, so I’ll just get another set of my clothes out for you to wear.” Alea opens the door at the top of the steps to show a purple-painted hall and a single bag.

“Where exactly are we?” Simmons asks as Alea leads her into the living room.

“My house. I found out that this place was on top of an SSR base and bought it. Altered the underground system so they connected.” Alea notices some movement of the couch and goes over to it. She leans over the back to Clint Barton asleep on the couch. Alea notices that he doesn’t have his aids in and allows him to sleep. Though she does spot his gold wedding band on his finger.

Alea motions for Simmons to follow her up the steps. “So, what type of clothes do you want?”

“Something comfortable.” 

Alea nods and goes into her room. She walks over to her closet and pulls out two pairs of sweatpants, a tank top for herself, and a soft t-shirt for Simmons. She then grabs a set of underwear from an unopened pack before tossing the clothes for herself onto the bed. She walks out to Simmons and hands her the clothes. She directs her to the hall bathroom.

She heads back into her room and pulls out a set of underwear from her dresser. She then opens the bottom-most drawer of the dresser to reveal two spare arms that don’t have anything past the connecting port and a set of tools. She pulls out the tools and one of the arms before walking over to her bed. She places the arm and tools on the bed before stripping out of her slightly salty clothes and taking off the arm. She then heads to the bathroom for a shower. 

After struggling slightly in the shower, mostly because she wasn’t entirely used to only having one arm, she dries off and dresses before contacting the arm. She then goes back into the bathroom to brush her hair and teeth. Once done she gathers her arm and the cleaning kit before heading down to the living room. Clint was awake and talking quietly with Simmons. Alea sits down on the floor in front of the coffee table. 

“Edwin, alert me when anything enters local airspace and looks like it’s going to land or if there are any updates from downstairs about Leopold Fitz.” There wasn’t an answer from the AI, but Alea didn’t look worried. She just started to take apart the arm.

“What exactly are you doing?” Simmons asks.

“Making sure that the two EMPs that it was exposed to didn’t do any lasting damage. And to clean out all the salt.” Alea pulls out a rag and wets it with alcohol before wiping down the plate that she had in her hand. 

When Alea was about half-way through the arm Edwin alerts her that something is entering the airspace. And that it looked to be SHIELD 616. All three of them head back down to the hanger. Alea grabs a jacket as they pass the hall closet and puts it on. 

They make it to the hanger just as the Bus lands. They go to where the loading bay was and Alea can hear Billy trying to get there. Alea watches as the ramp lowers and reveals Coulson, Triplett, Skye, and May. Once the ramp hits the ground all three of them rush up the ramp to the team. Clint grabs Coulson by his coat before kissing him. Alea hugs Coulson as soon as Clint lets him go and she hears Skye ask about Fitz. 

“Where did you two get a change of clothes and on that matter where did Barton come from?” Triplett taps on Alea’s shoulder.

“My house was built on top of this base. I bought it and connected it to this base in ‘78. Clint had been up there when I went to take a shower, cause I could feel the ocean salt between my arm and the metal casing from the stabilizing part. Simmons is in some of my clothes.” 

Billy finally arrived and started the same spiel that Eric had when they had reached Providence. Those two were very similar. He gives the team that he and Alea had been calling this place over the last year, which was the Playground. Named as such because he watched her navigate the place like a child would a maze in a playground. 

As they head into the base Alea watches Coulson closely. She decided that after the team broke up to sleep she would talk to him. First though came moving all the stuff that Garrett had brought onto the Bus into storage.

Alea helped Triplett move the door that Garrett had carved Kree Gryphs into storage hoping to hell that Coulson hadn’t looked at it closely. It could send him spiraling and Alea didn’t want to have to be the one to have to do something about it.

That night, as Coulson and Clint slept down in the Playground Alea, felt for the link to Coulson and went down it.

_ Alea could see most of Coulson’s thoughts. Some of them worried her though seeing as they were close to what she saw in the TAHITI patients. She saw the writings. The Kree Gryphs that even now she wasn’t sure where she’d seen them before. Even though the work with Lawson was done mostly in the language she’d never seen anything quite like this. It struck something within her though that she’s seen them before when she was a child, but where it was hard to say. _

_ Alea was still sitting in Coulson’s head trying to figure out what the hell the symbols meant when Coulson woke up. He freed himself from Clint and made his way to the storage room. Alea pulled free of his head and joined him. _

Alea watched from a row of shelves as he carved the symbols into the wall. After a while, the wall was full of them and Coulson seemed to come back to himself. When he turned and saw Alea he startled. “How long have you been there?”

“Almost as long as you have, Phil.” 

“So you saw. Do you know anything about these things?” Coulson gestured to the wall.

“Not much more than you do. I feel like something that I saw in my childhood had them on it, but I’m not sure. It’s there just behind what I can solidly remember, back when my  _ father _ was still experimenting on me quite regularly. Back when it was still mostly done at SHIELD.” Alea ran her hand through her hair and looked at Coulson with hurting eyes.

“Let’s get this hidden and then we’re going to go to bed.” Coulson pulled Alea’s hand out of her hair. They got to work covering up the writings after Alea took a few pictures. Once they were done Coulson tugged Alea with him to his bed. It surprised both of them that Clint was still asleep when they got there. He was typically the one to wake up whenever someone else did. They didn’t think too long about it and instead got into the bed and fell asleep not long after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've decided to end this part here with the end of Season one of Agents of SHIELD.


End file.
